


The Heart Knows No Devotion

by Nos4a2no9



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:13:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6931912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nos4a2no9/pseuds/Nos4a2no9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you."</p>
<p>Steve had said that to Bucky before. Many times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart Knows No Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little tag-on to the scene between Steve and Bucky in the Quinjet. Because honestly.

"I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you."

The statement hangs heavy in the air between them. The silence is undercut only slightly by the steady hum of the Quinjet's engine. Steve has to focus on the controls. Even then his hands shake.

_Of course you are,_ he wants to say. _You're worth everything to me._ But twenty years of friendship and seventy years of silence and the madness of the last 52 hours rise up in Steve's throat to choke the words back. Even now he can't say it. Especially now.

So instead he offers a field dressing to the open wound of Bucky's guilt. "What you did all those years...it wasn't you," he tries, knowing it's not enough. A thumb in the dam won't stop the deluge. 

"I know," Bucky says, and Steve doesn't have to see his face to know exactly how Bucky Barnes looks when he's close to breaking down. "But I did it anyway." 

Steve winces and thumbs on the autopilot. They haven't had any real chance to talk, not since he and Bucky stared each other down in that abandoned warehouse, vice pressed tight against Bucky's metal arm. Bucky had known him. Bucky _remembered_. But Steve had cut Bucky off before all the old stories came flooding out in front of Sam: newspapers in his shoes, his mother's name...that was the least of what Bucky knew about him. 

But the past was their private country now, secret and shared, and Steve hadn't wanted anyone, not even Sam, to hear those old stories. They belonged to Bucky, and to Steve.

The minutes ticked by, speeding them along to Siberia and whatever fate awaited them there. Steve didn't need to sleep--he could go for another day or so without much more than a catnap--but he was hungry. He slipped out of his harness to go and find a couple dozen MREs tucked away in one of the numerous compartments of the Quinjet. If he was starving Bucky probably was too. 

He turned to find Bucky staring at him, tracing the line of his shoulders and lingering over the torn and burned patches of his uniform before finally up to meet Steve's gaze with his own unflinching stare. Bucky'd never looked at him like that, during the war. Back then it'd been all furtive glances and clucking disapproval and Bucky muttering, "Fuck, Steve, what did you let them do to you?" As if every time he was confronted with Steve's new serum-enhanced body he was shocked by the sudden change. 

They'd spent nearly a year haring around Europe with the Howling Commandos, and in all that time Bucky'd never really looked at him properly. But now Bucky was staring at him openly, nakedly, and some small part of Steve wanted to curl away from what he saw in Bucky's eyes.

A chill of recognition hit him then, eidetic memory kicking in and stirring up a whiff of that secret-country past they had shared so long ago. Bucky had chosen his words deliberately. 

_"I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you."_

Steve had said that to Bucky before. Many times. 

Steve had spat out those same words out in blood-soaked syllables, along with a couple of loose teeth, after alleyway fights and barroom brawls. He'd said them after the garment workers strike in '34, after he'd charged the line of strikebreakers outside of Pepperell's shirtwaist factory and gone down in a hail of nightsticks and baseball bats. Bucky'd had to wade in after him, earning himself a broken nose and a black eye for his troubles. 

He'd pulled Steve out of the fray, back then. Always did, even though Steve'd been bloody and wheezing and fighting him the whole time. He'd been almost desperate, then, to die for the cause. Bucky had gotten them away from the bullies and the scabs and the police just as a full-scale riot was breaking out. He'd gotten them back to Brooklyn and found a spigot and washed the blood off Steve's face so his Ma wouldn't see. He was working on setting his own broken nose when Steve had said it: "I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you."

Bucky'd flashed him one of his cocky grins (and winced, having forgotten his smashed-up nose) and said, "'Course you are, Stevie. Think I'd do this for just anyone?"

Steve had said it again in 1937, when work'd been so scarce they'd had to sleep out on the streets and stand in the breadlines for the first time since Steve'd lost his Ma in '35. Steve had gotten bronchitis that winter, and it'd ballooned quickly into pneumonia. They were squatting in a Hooverville off the north shore of the Hudson at the time, right where the bitter winter wind hit like a freight train and blew up ice and snow from the riverbed. There was no money for medicine in 1937, no money for food, or a candle, or anything to provide even the meanest comfort. 

So Bucky had gone out one night. When he'd come back to their cobbled-together shack in the Hudson Hooverville he'd been sporting a split lip and bruises on his wrists and a bottle of medicine. Shame clung to him like a second skin. He'd smelled like sex and semen and Steve had known it right then and there. He'd known exactly what it was Bucky had done to get Steve the medication he'd needed to pull through. 

Bucky had saved him. Bucky'd always saved him, no matter what it cost.

"I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you," Steve had said then, staring up at the rusted corrugated tin roof that bent and twisted in the howling wind. Buck'd slid down into the pallet next to him and gathered Steve in against the warmth of his chest, and buried his nose in Steve's hair. 

"'Course you are, Stevie," he'd said, voice rough and tight like he was going to cry. "Think I'd do this for just anyone?"

But when Bucky had turned to him on the way to Siberia, right at the end of the line, battered and broken, and said, "I don't know if I'm worth all of this to you," what had Steve done? 

He'd turned away, and hoped that silence would say what he couldn't bring himself to vocalize. 

"You're worth it, Bucky," Steve said, thinking about Tony's heartbreak and the fact that four of his friends were on their way to prison just for helping him. "Think I'd do this for just anyone?"

Bucky's smile, soft and sad, was answer enough. Twenty-odd years of friendship, seventy years of silence, and finally, finally, it was the right thing to say.

_.fin_


End file.
